Any Bharatiya Janata Party leader coming to Delhi knows whom to meet to get work done. For organisational matters such as appointment of office-bearers or funds for local units, they routinely call on J.P. Nadda who talks to Amit Shah before taking a decision. At the government level, they prefer to reach out to the home minister directly, and a favourable response from Shah’s aides is seen as a guarantee the work will be done.

Once Shah takes a decision, that becomes the official view, both of the party and the government. Journalists covering the ruling party and various governments cite many instances that show the growing imprint of the Prime Minister’s most trusted colleague.

In 2014, soon after Narendra Modi took charge as Prime Minister, he asked Amitbhai to take over as BJP president. In 2019, he was drafted into the cabinet as home minister with additional charge of the BJP organisation. Other than perhaps on defence and foreign affairs, Shah is seen as active everywhere. He is believed to have a crucial say in the choice of BJP chief ministers, governors, chairpersons of statutory bodies, vice-chancellors, and even nominees to head regulatory bodies such as the Telephone Regulatory Authority and the Airports Authority.  Now, Modi has asked him to supervise the revision of GST rates in consultation with state governments.

The involvement of Shah in a decision brings an air of authority and finality – the reason why chief ministers and BJP and NDA leaders line up to meet him and try to curry favour by supporting and implementing his pet projects.

Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is a past master at this game, and Maharashtra’s Devendra Fadnavis is fast picking up. Look at the way he tried to push Hindi, making it compulsory in primary classes in the western state. However, the decision instantly split the ruling alliance, united the quarrelling Thackeray cousins and led to a Marathi movement. Thus, Amit Shah’s Hindi promotion agenda paradoxically ended up as an anti-Hindi movement that was so strong that Fadnavis was forced to withdraw his order.

Fadnavis pushed another item on Shah’s agenda that he hoped would also endear him to the RSS – he allowed homoeopaths to practise allopathy in the state. But the medical fraternity fiercely opposed the decision, and he was forced to reverse this order too.

Then came the Urban Naxal bill amidst protests from civil society members and the Opposition. On his agenda is an anti-conversion bill, ‘harsher’ than similar laws in other BJP-ruled states. Fadnavis has also ordered the cancellation of Scheduled Caste certificates for people who are not Hindus, Buddhists or Sikhs.

The sudden surge in raids, and the eviction and deportation of alleged Bangladeshi Muslims is another instance of BJP-ruled states vying with one other to please Shah. Mumbai police have so far this year arrested 201 alleged Bangladeshi citizens and deported 20 of them. In the national capital region, Bengali-speaking people have been detained. In Odisha, another BJP-ruled state, 400 people were detained, instantly triggering tension with neighboring West Bengal.  Assam is tracking down people declared illegal foreigners and pushing them across the border.

However, like Fadnavis’s order on Hindi imposition, the Bangladeshi gambit might be backfiring on the BJP. Mamata Banerjee has grabbed the opportunity and turned it into an issue of Bengali ‘asmita’, a word coined by Modi as chief minister. Braving rain, she marched on Kolkata’s streets and roared: “I have decided to speak louder in Bengali, arrest me if you can.” Mamata alleged that Bengalis were being targeted by the BJP, appearing determined to make it an emotional issue before the elections next year.

SIR in Bihar

The special intensive revision of electoral rolls by the Election Commission, which is now under way in Bihar, is being seen by critics as an attempt to clear the path for the National Register of Citizens (NCR) – a pet project of Amit Shah.

Gyanesh Kumar, who was secretary in the home ministry, was appointed chief election commissioner in February this year under the new Election Commission Act that is under challenge in the Supreme Court. The petitioners have opposed the exclusion of the Chief Justice of India from the selection committee, arguing that this was aimed at ensuring a majority for the government in the panel.

Under the new act, the three-member selection panel includes the Prime Minister, a cabinet minister nominated by the Prime Minister, and the leader of the Opposition. Shah was the cabinet minister nominated by Modi to the panel that chose Gyanesh Kumar. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal has described the Election Commission as a ‘puppet’ of the home ministry.

Fears have also been raised that the SIR is aimed at ensuring the ruling party’s victory in the forthcoming Assembly elections in Bihar by weeding out lakhs of Opposition voters from the electoral rolls. The exclusion of Aadhaar and voter ID cards from the list of valid documents for SIR exposes large sections of the Muslim, backward, and Dalit communities to the risk of being disenfranchised. These sections, the bulk of whom traditionally vote for non-BJP parties, use Aadhaar and voter ID cards as their basic identity documents. Few would possess birth certificates or land ownership or government identity papers that are on the list of 11 documents that the Election Commission is asking for.

The BJP’s preparations for the Bihar elections started more than a year ago, with Shah and Modi visiting the state even before the Delhi polls in February. Shah again met state BJP leaders for two days in March. In May, the Prime Minister went to Patna  to discuss booth-level strategy. In fact, the party had begun setting up booth-level committees as early as December – a full six months before the Election Commission launched the SIR in June. B.L. Santhosh was also rushed to Bihar to address concerns over SIR. The party now has the highest number of booth level agents (BLAs) – over 51,900 – on the ground.

Union ministers and the BJP’s central  and local leaders have all rallied behind the Election Commission as the Opposition raised questions about SIR. Three actions of Election Commission have heightened the Opposition’s fears about its integrity:

• First, the overriding discretionary powers given to Electoral Registration Officers (EROs) to decide the validity of documents submitted by the applicants will leave lakhs of voters vulnerable to an official’s personal biases, if not corruption. Caste bias is an issue, and the bureaucracy in the state is dominated by upper castes.
• Second, the double standard on accepting Aadhaar and voter ID cards as valid documents for the SIR. These two most commonly used documents are being accepted in the BJP-dominated regions of Patna and Begusarai, but not in the Seemanchal districts, such as Kishanganj, that have a high percentage of Muslim, poor and illiterate voters and are not BJP strongholds.
• Third, the eagerness with which figures of voters’ registration and detection of alleged Bangladeshis and Nepalese and Myanmarese are being made public, often credited to sources in the Election Commission.

The Bihar model could soon be replicated all over India, with West Bengal the next in line. However, conquering West Bengal will not be an easy task for Shah, who has twice before moved heaven and earth to unseat Mamata Banerjee but failed.

Writing on the wall

While Amit Shah insists that those who speak English will be ashamed, look at the writing on the wall in small towns and villages, especially in the north: ‘Learn English speaking in seven days’ or ‘English from UK-returned’. Trump recently ordered that proficiency in English would be compulsory for truck drivers, which could impact the livelihood of the almost 1.50 lakh Sikh drivers in the US. A flier at London’s Heathrow airport recently sparked a controversy when she  complained on social media about the airport's Indian staff not speaking a word of English, and asked for them to be deported.

P. Raman is a veteran journalist.

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